Ron Paul: Our foreign policy costs $1 trillion a year and Iran Sanctions are an act of war

I became familiar with Ron Paul several years ago from his anti-war writings during the early portion of the Iraq war. Those writings resonated with me as I saw them making a lot of sense in a time where the war drums were beating incessantly. At that time, talking against the war was a lonely undertaking as most of the American public had been whipped up into a fervor in the aftermath of 9/11, but there was Paul, a republican at that, talking against the war and making a lot of sense.

One of the things that’s very observable to me is that our nation’s foreign policy never makes dramatic turns. Sure, it might get tweaked here and there, but there’s rarely, if ever, a radical departure from the path it’s on regardless of the political party that happens to be in charge. From where I sit, this means that foreign policy is set or driven from a source outside of our political system and the job of the political parties is to simply manage that which as been directed by someone else. That’s the only way I can account for the fact that ostensibly liberal or conservative political elements carry out foreign policies that are nearly indistinguishable.

I recall a conservation with one of my kids after 9/11. My daughter was asking me to explain what happened. I used the following analogy:

“Suppose I opened your bedroom door just as you slapped your sister. Since I didn’t see what happened before I opened the door (and I didn’t bother to ask), I might assume that you slapped her unprovoked and punish you as a result. The only way I can put what you did in context is to know what happened before I opened the door. I might not agree with your response, but I’m able to understand what caused it. Everything else works the same way. To understand why something happened, you have to understand the context. September 11 was like a slap in the face as the door was opened. To put it in context, we have to know what happened before the door was opened…. “

Often, the door can be found ajar if you look in the right places. That almost never occurs in the headlines or in the banter on the news, but in the little noticed back pages or brief mentions. The real news is never really widely disseminated and the sanctions on Iran fall into this area as a non newsworthy item that’s really a precursor to war. A war with Iran will be also be the precursor to a third world war. China and Russia have significant investments in Iran and they will likely come to the defense of their ally.

This is insanity fueled by greed and the need for conquest of the world’s oil resources. Ron Paul speaks the absolute truth here as few do.

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“If we remain poor and dependent, the riches of other men will not avail us. If we are ignorant, the intelligence of other men will do but little for us. If we are foolish, the wisdom of other men will not guide us. If we are wasteful of time and money, the economy of other men will only make our destitution the more disgraceful and hurtful. “

Frederick Douglass

“If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you’re going east, and you will be walking east when you think you’re going west. This generation, especially of our people, has a burden, more so than any other time in history. The most important thing we can learn to do today is think for ourselves.”